Seva

One of the wisest men we’ve met thus far in India is named Krishna. He is a musician with a PhD in physics, a mystical man with a story for every lesson. Last week, he came to speak to us about seva, or service with spiritual intention.

He shared with us the Eastern philosophy about service. Krishna, I assure you, said this all 100 times better than I’ll be able to, but here to the best of my ability is one of his points.

When you are sleeping, he explained, you dream up a whole world. You can find rushing rivers, towering buildings, and burning fires - all in your head. When you wake up, you think you are in the real world, but according to the mystics of the East, that too is a sort of dream world.

When the Buddha achieved enlightenment, and people asked him what he did, he would reply, “I am awake.” He had become in tune with the oneness of the universe, reaching complete tranquility by transcending the pseudo reality of the world we live in.

Because of this connection of all things, we are each other. I, for example, am the rickshaw driver, the beggar outside the temple, the dog dashing between motorcyclists down a narrow cobblestone alleyway. It is simply the illusion of the physical world that makes us feel separate.

Think for a moment, as Krishna asked us to, about an arm. Pointing to his arm, a man might say, “this is my arm.” No one would point to his elbow and exclaim, “this is me!”

But hit that same man on the arm, and he will indignantly ask, “Why did you hit me?”

Through this lens, we view the other – be it the leper living in the box by the Assi Ghat steps or the sabjii walla on the corner – as separate from ourselves. No one would look at another person and say, “That is me.” But when there is suffering inflicted on one part of the universe, the entire entity takes offense.

Western social biologists spend so much time trying to discern what it is that makes humans want to help others. Is it that someday, we hope others will help us? Do we expect a parade in our honor, and a shiny medal of honor?

We serve because when we see a child physically and mentally scarred by her surroundings, we too feel that pain. Because when a country’s low literacy rate holds back its intellectual advancement, no country can move forward. We serve because when a boy who cannot walk is shunned by society as being useless, it is as if we are all ostracized for differences we cannot control.

I looked around the circle as Krishna spoke, thinking about the various seva that each of us would soon be embarking on. I had in my mind the image of an arm being a part of a whole, and each of us having an arm that had been affected by the service sites we’d visited. Be it the orphaned children Andrew works with at the Bal Ashram, Chhaya’s students at the Southpoint School and Joe’s at World Literacy of Canada, the differently-abled youths of Lizzie’s Kiran Center, or the children of women in prostitution who I care for with the Guria team; each person with whom we connect personally affects our motivation to help.

It is as if we are one of the multi-appendaged Hindu Gods, our five arms reaching out to redress the problems of the world. Documented somewhere, I’m sure, is the little-known tale of the Bridge Year Devi. Beginning with the nine months she spent living in Varanasi, India, her story ends with her riding off on her tiger in the service of her nation – and the service of all nations.